


The Invisible Side of Joshua Dun

by trees_fly



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Invisibility, M/M, Superpowers, josh's anxiety takes a whole new turn y'all, on tour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 13:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16854502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trees_fly/pseuds/trees_fly
Summary: It starts with his feet. It always starts with his feet.And during interviews and shows, it's probably not the best time to start disappearing.





	The Invisible Side of Joshua Dun

It starts with his feet. It always starts with his feet.

He could be sitting there, with his hands clasped together as if the sweat were glue, twirling his thumbs around each other as if they seemed to be tying a knot only visible to his own eyes. How ironic. He could simply be listening to Tyler talking to the interviewer, answering the same question for the fortieth time, but as soon as the interviewer turns to Josh with or without the microphone in their hands is when it begins. 

Always with the feet. It always starts with his feet. 

He can feel them slither away. As if they are being touched with ice cubes that slowly traveled up his leg. His stomach begins to twist, his neck collapsing in on itself, as the microphone is held out to Josh. The interviewer is starting to look impatient. They always do.

Josh takes it. He doesn’t think he’s supposed to, but everyone just rolls with it. 

“Can you repeat the question, again?” He asks, eyes to the floor, eyes to his feet – oh goodness, the shoes have begun to follow his feet – to Tyler’s gaze on the other side of the room. He shuffles in his seat as he leans forward, closer to Josh, closer to the interviewer. At any second, he could pounce.

“Sure!” They’re way too happy. So oblivious. “What do you think about the lyric….” Josh didn’t catch the rest. He couldn’t ask again. Lyrics were for Tyler anyhow, not him. He wasn’t a writer, just the guy in the back laying the beats, setting the tone for the entire show, that was his job. 

His mind was whirling away. His shins began to feel cold, and now all he could focus on were how they were disappearing.

“I think they’re pretty cool.” He speaks, “I know they have more meaning than what Tyler implies, cause, well, it’s Tyler. For me, uh, when I hear them, usually hints some fill or tempo change that’s about to come on, really.”

“What meaning do you think the lyrics have that Tyler isn’t implying?”

“Well, uh…” It takes every once to keep a straight look into the interviewer’s gaze while answering while keeping his knees from slipping away. It’s a stupid battle; Josh hates it. It’s all invisible to all but him and yet, Tyler seems to see it clear as day as he finally leaps.

He answers it swiftly, clearly, confidently, calmly, snatching the microphone from Josh’s hands.

The interview ends quickly. Tyler and Josh are fast to leave, taking the short route out the door to the bus parked outside. They don’t say goodbye. Josh’s legs don’t appear until they step outside, where’s it dark and the moonlight hides the fact that his toes had disappeared in the middle of an interrogation. 

\----  
It doesn’t happen again until there’s a show. A day later, they’re on the stage rehearsing, checking the sounds and how they bounced around the arena like ballerinas. How Tyler directs the dance is simply beautiful. But it’s never perfection until the crowd rolls in.

And does the crowd roll in.

Tyler and Josh aren’t allowed on stage past a certain time. Until all the fans have been checked-in, checked, and seated, are they even to think about standing in front of all fifteen thousand of them until five minutes after their scheduled time. 

Josh is already breaking the rules. 

Tyler is too, but Tyler is allowed to get away with it.

They’re both sitting on the couch, scrolling through their phones as Tyler’s mind whirls with the positives about this show tonight being the best show ever, and Josh wondering what’ll they think of him?

Tyler’s thoughts are loud – he’s speaking them directly at Josh while his eyes are glued to the phone – while Josh’s are quiet. He’s pushing them to the back of his mind. 

Till the curtain is drawn. The two men are at their places, as Tyler Joseph sings his words and as Joshua Dun lays down the beat for tonight.

The thoughts crawl their way to the front of his brain. His feet began to grow cold. The fans are hollering with unfathomable excitement and yet Josh feels doubt. The same doubt Tyler sings about to the thousands below as they bellow the words right back at him. 

Josh plays the drums louder. And louder. But his feet are still cold, and when looking down, even in the flashing light, Josh can visibly see that his feet have become visibly see through. He can feel the beat of the kick drum he produces under his toes and yet his brain tells him in some otherwise fashion that the sound is not being made by him. Your foot’s not there, how can it be so?

It sends him in a spiraling panic that allows his knees to vanish into thin air. 

By beating the drums till they bleed allows him to keep himself from becoming completely transparent. From completely disappearing. From being invisible. 

It stays like that, throughout the show. Through the blinding lights, the racing energy, the deafening music that everyone puts their heart and soul into.

And the drum platform. Oh. It makes it to the drum platform. 

It stays as he climbs the crowd, pulling himself onto the small board, as he fixates himself on it. The platform moves, just slightly. The fear he’ll fall off kicks in. It’s like an impending doom that turns the crowd of crying and screaming fans into a pit of metal spikes. 

He swallows. Scans the crowd. Prays to God, and plays the finale of Morph. 

\---- 

There’s talk on Twitter of how Josh’s legs disappeared when he stepped out into the crowd. Half of the comments makes puns like ‘oh he’s just morphing into the background.’ But the rest are scatter thoughts of how it could be the trick of the light, a new part of their show, or some bull crap that just teased him to no extent. Why couldn’t it have been only his feet? Or his hair? Or not happen at all?

Josh in the bathroom at the venue. Hidden away in the hallways with the dressing rooms. He’s completely gone. Nothing but the small tips of his hair could been seen against the white tile of the walls. Even then, you wouldn’t see him unless if you knew to look for him. 

Panic floods into him like a storm. It takes over his mind and suddenly he’s drowning in a pile of anxiety and doubt. He remembers he’s invisible. He remembers no one can see him. And now that ticking bomb inside his head shortens three inches on the fuse. It’s about to go off. 

It was dumb. It made superpowers feel like a nuisance more than anything. 

He was so fucking lucky Tyler didn’t see it. The drama, the rumors, the clips of them stumbling on stage. The fact Josh starting becoming invisible halfway through the show because of fear. But no one knows that last part. 

Tyler tunes it all out. It’s part of his job. 

A voice is calling for him. It asks security guards outside if Josh has been seen. Which is funny. Josh finds it funny, funny enough that somehow, ten minutes later, he’s visibly seen on the bathroom floor curled into a tight ball and Tyler suddenly by his side. 

He doesn’t ask what bothers him. He helps him stand, and they walk out of the venue through the backdoors hidden away from the public eye. 

\---- 

Three days later, they’re sitting in the bus. Tyler is tuning the ukulele for the seventh time, even though they’re rich enough to hire a tuner to do it for him. Josh is playing on the Nintendo console. He keeps the volume low for Tyler. He keeps his phone hidden in his bunk for himself. 

Suddenly Tyler stops. He sets the ukulele down. 

“Is everything okay?” He’s not looking Josh in the eyes. They’re trained on the floor below his shoes. 

“Yeah.” Josh brushes it off. He misses the jump and now Link is falling to his doom. 

“I don’t think so, Josh.” Tyler states. “What is it?”

Josh pauses the game and puts down the controller. “It’s nothing important, Tyler. Just stupid rumors on the internet as always.”

“Just laugh at it.”

“Or block it out.”

“That doesn’t seem to be working for you well.”

A pause. 

Josh turns off the console and stands from the couch. “I’m going for a walk.”

Tyler leaves his phone on the couch and follows. “I’m coming with you.”

It starts to take his feet again. Its cold fog grasps his toes and suddenly it feels like he’s walking on thin ice. He doesn’t want Tyler to see what’s next, and yet, he wishes he could tell him everything. And that’s the question. _Why can’t he?_

They walk out of the bus. They trail the sidewalks of the city, with its tall skyscrapers stabbing through the clouds and the people rushing past them to get to where they need to be. Tyler and Josh are the only ones who take their time. 

Josh seems to lead the way. For once. He directs them to a secluded alleyway, with a highway bridge hollowing above them. He’s shivering. His feet are still visible, but his toes are long gone. 

“You were lying to me on the bus.”

They stop walking. Josh has been caught.

“I know those comments they say online haven’t crawled into your skin. There’s something else. It’s screaming in your eyes.”

Josh doesn’t say anything. His back faces Tyler. He hears the footsteps of his friend approach him, crunching the gravel of the alleyway. It’s starting to take his legs. Always starting at his feet – his knees are next. 

“You want to say it, but you can’t.”

Tyler rests a hand on Josh’s shoulder. Josh squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t want to see what Tyler says next. He doesn’t want to see his reaction to Josh’s answer. 

“What’s holding you back, Josh?”

Josh is opening his mouth before he can think. The words are forming on his tongue before he can blink. His breath is forcing him to speak the word before his consciousness finally catches up.

“You.” He says. 

“What?” Tyler sounds like he just stabbed him in the chest.

“You. I’m scared of what you’ll think. Of what everyone will think. People have already found out online and I was hoping to keep it a secret. But of course,” he closes his hands into tight fists. Tyler takes a step forward. “Emotions always get in the fucking way.”

“You know I would never run.”

Josh sighs. He finally looks at Tyler, opening his eyes, turning towards his face. Tyler looks as if Josh had taken his heart from with freshly stabbed chest and ripped it in half for his to see. He looks as if Josh broke his heart, and left him on the side of the road for an incoming storm to drown him. 

Josh drops his fists. 

He whispers. “I can turn invisible, Tyler.” 

The sentence is foreign in his mouth. He’s never said it allowed. 

“You can?”

“It happens when I’m anxious. When I’m scared. My body begins to disappear, first my toes. It always starts with my toes. I have to fight it just to stay here, just to be able for everyone to see me. I get scared that I people may find out if I just let go, and it just makes it worse, and I have to fight harder. It’s so dumb.”

“A Catch-22.” Tyler says. He steps one last step towards Josh. “It’s okay. I’m here. You can let go.”

Josh fights it for one second longer, and then he’s gone. It’s like stepping back from the fight. It’s like dropping his withdrawn sword at his feet and then falling to his knees as the beast consumes him whole. 

Except Tyler is here. He’s holding his hand. He’s on the ground next to him. He looks at him in the eyes as if he could see him. As if Josh weren’t some anxious, train-wreck of a being that disappeared before him. 

Tyler’s eyes widen, yes, just a bit, before he has both of Josh’s hands and said. “You don’t have to be afraid. We’re here, safe.”

“We’re in an alleyway.”

Tyler laughs. “You’re not wrong. Come back when you’re ready.”

“I think I just want to go home.”

Tyler smiles again. “Let’s go home.”

Together, hand in hand, with Josh still hidden from the world, the two walk back through the city, onto the bus, where they wait patiently for Josh to return. 

The only sign of him sitting on the couch is a singular, floating Wii remote, and Zelda running around screen with Tyler watching from the side. 

\---- 

“You remember the plan, right?” 

Josh nods. They practiced it last night. They could not mess it up.

“Okay, let’s go over it real quick – Wait! He’s here!” The door opens slowly, and Mark Eshleman appears. 

Mark has a camera around his neck like a tourist. He had the cargo shorts, the socks with sandals, and all he was missing was the Hawaiian pineapple print button up. Or ‘The Dad Shirt.’

Tyler’s already smiling. Josh disappears, and bolts on the other side of the room where Mark stands. As soon as the door closes behind Mark, Tyler’s face is stone blank. 

“Hey Tyler,” Mark says tiredly, “Have you seen Josh? They need him on stage to check out the kit on stage.”

Tyler shrugs. “I haven’t seen him. Did you check the bus?”

“Oh, that was the first place I looked.” Mark adjusts the camera around his neck. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! I even looked in his bunk--- What the heck is going on?” The lights are flickering and a ghostly ‘oooOOOOooo’ comes from Josh’s lips. Mark grumbles, and turns around towards the light switch by the door. “Guys, stop it! Wait.”

That’s when Mark realizes. He steps closer to the switch, watching it flick the lights up and down on its own. Josh can barely hold in a laugh. Tyler holds no emotion on his face whatsoever. It’s a white sheet of paper. 

“How the fuck are you doing this?” 

“I don’t know, Mark.” Tyler deadpans. “Maybe it’s broken?”

The lights stop flickering. 

Mark jumps.

“Agh! Something toughed my hair! Was that you?”

Tyler shakes his head. “Wasn’t me, I’m standing all the way over here.” Tyler gestures to the space he stands in, approximately three feet away from the door, three feet away from Mark. Mark growls.

Then the lights are flickering again. Mark violently turns around, reaching for the light switch just as the lights stop. The camera around his neck begins to float above his head, slowly, the strap moving over his head. 

Mark screams. 

He grabs the camera, yanks it from Josh’s unseen hands, and holds it tightly in his own. 

“I swear to god! I know it’s you Tyler!”

Tyler raises his hands in surrender. “It’s not me.”

The look on Marks face is priceless. 

“Whatever! Whoever it is, when I find them, I’m going to sue them! No one gets to touch my camera!” Mark yells, stomping out of the green room, and slamming the door behind him. 

Tyler and Josh burst into laughter. Tears in their eyes. Josh reappears and they fall onto the couch as if they were going to past out and die. They couldn’t breathe. 

The door blasts open. Mark is back, and he stares them down with sharp eyes until his eyes meet Josh on the couch. Their laughter vanishes into thin air, and Josh has that guilty look in his eye. 

But all Mark says is: “Josh, when the hell did you get here?”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. I hope y'all enjoyed. I hope you all are having a good day too. Feel free to leave comments. Those are pretty chill.


End file.
